FLIP takes a dive at 40

Research vessel is still a master at going under

The San Diego Union-Tribune

By Bruce Lieberman

June 22, 2002

ABOARD THE FLIP - Nine miles northwest of Point Loma, the research platform FLIP was sinking fast, its stern washed over by slow-moving swells.

The bow rose silently skyward. Its cylindrical, 300-foot-long stern disappeared into the ocean, stirring a foamy sea 60 feet below the bow.

The craft, engineered to anchor itself with the sheer weight of water flooded in its stern, fixed itself into the ocean with the stability of an anchored buoy.

The Floating Instrument Platform is a kind-of buoy that is towed horizontally to sea and then deploys by flipping its bow into the air. But of course, it's so much more than that.

FLIP turns 40 today. Operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, it is a one-of-a-kind research station that allows scientists to set up shop anywhere in the world to study the upper ocean and the air directly above it - almost as if it weren't there at all.

"If you need to look at the ocean up close, there's nothing like it anywhere on the planet," said Rob Pinkel, a Scripps oceanographer and chief scientist on numerous FLIP research cruises over the years.

The FLIP, called a spar buoy, was created during the Cold War when the United States was scrambling to improve sonar technology in its undersea game of cat and mouse with Soviet submariners.

The Navy needed to better understand how differences in the ocean's temperature and salinity influenced the way sound travels through it. To study those dynamics, researchers needed a stable platform it could station anywhere in the world, whether in mild or rough seas.

The FLIP was the answer. The craft resembles a conventional ship at the bow, but the likeness stops there. Much of the long stern is designed to flood with water and sink 300 feet below the surface, flipping the bow into the air and anchoring it there.

Upright, the craft resembles an oil platform, or a sinking ship. But the FLIP is as buoyant as a cork and more stable than any boat.

The FLIP was designed over two years and built in three months for about $500,000. Although its initial mission was primarily a military one, the FLIP soon proved its value for civilian research. The government continues to use the FLIP for its sonar research, but the stable platform also continues to offer oceanographers an unrivaled laboratory.

"This ship has supported an entire generation of oceanographers and acoustic people," said Fred Spiess, a Scripps oceanographer. "Now, it seems it's ready for another generation."

Spiess and his former Scripps colleague, Fred Fisher, were two of the FLIP's three designers.

This September, Pinkel will take the FLIP to the Hawaiian Islands, where he and a team of oceanographers will study how cold currents deep in the ocean mix with warmer water and influence the weather.

Carl Friehe, of UC Irvine, studies how waves and wind act on one another to shape weather.

"Our measurments, especially of the wind, would be real difficult on a ship," Friehe said. "That's why FLIP is ideal."

Sensors on booms extending from the FLIP, and others lowered into the water, profile ocean and air undisturbed by the turbulence of a ship's hull, or the noise and vibration of its engine.

Friehe, using the FLIP to measure how energy is exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere, hopes to advance a little understood dynamic.

"Seventy percent of the Earth is ocean, and energy exchange is an important part of the climate cycle, but it's not well understood," Friehe said.

The FLIP's cabins, stairs and passages are disorienting while the craft is horizontal. Tables and bunks rotate on trunnions. The head has two sinks, one perpendicular to the other.

The craft, lacking propulsion, must be towed. Rides can be long and tortuous. The FLIP was designed as a vertical platform, and waves can rock the towed craft to and fro.

But once it goes vertical, the FLIP provides a stable platform for 30 days or more of research.

While vertical, the FLIP's quarters rise 50 to 60 feet above the water, giving those aboard a panoramic view.

Quiet and still, the FLIP stands in the sea but leaves it alone, offering scientists an intimacy with the environment they find in few other places.

Yesterday, as the FLIP was upright and lazy swells coursed through the Pacific, scores of dolphins darted about in a broad circle around the FLIP, leaping into the air in pairs.

Before moving on, several of them swam directly beneath the FLIP as if it weren't there.